Chapter 26

Twenty-Six

K irill

She stiffens beneath me. My cock is still hard inside her, my cum leaking from her overfull cunt, and she's pulling away from me. I feel every one of her mental shields slam into place, one, by fucking, one.

I want to break them down. I want to burn them to ash.

Now that she's let me inside—now that I've had her—I won't let anything stand between us. Not even her. Not her God. And not the shame her life of religion has led her to feel in the wake of this perfection.

Thrusting my semi-hard erection into her, I revel in her sweet gasp before I lift my head from the soft crevice where her neck meets her shoulder, and I take her lips. A protest had been forming, but I devour it. Refusing to let it fall into the space between us, and I sigh when she softens beneath me. Like she can't help it.

She's mine.

I want to thank her. But will that make me an ass? Will she feel used if I thank her for giving into me? For opening herself to me? For letting me inside?

For giving me soft when everything has been hard for so, so long.

Fuck, I don't know what to do. I've never been in this position. I've never cared about what a woman felt after, as long as she was satisfied. But I care what she feels. I care about her emotions. Her thoughts. Her fears.

I'm her first. Her husband.

Her only.

I stay rooted deep inside her until the cold becomes too intense to ignore for a moment longer. I wish I'd had the foresight to do this back at the cabin—in the bed—in the warmth where I could have remained inside her all night long.

Fucking fuck, but I hadn't meant for this to happen. Not here. Not like this.

She winces sharply as I pull my dick from inside her, shoving it into my pants. She's bled again, which is a shock. I wasn't expecting that after last night. "Did I hurt you?"

She shakes her head, but doesn't reply. She looks—stricken.

My heart skips in my chest.

I set to pulling her leggings back up her legs, then reach for the pants I'd tossed into the snow. Giving them a rough shake, I help her into them. Then I help her button her shirt. I don't stop until she's bundled up tight, gloves and all.

"Say something, Ruby."

Her honey-colored eyes blink slowly, as though she's trying, and failing, to process all that has happened between us. Her innocence is lost. It's mine, now and forever.

"I—" She looks away, a frown drawing her brows close. "I think I'm hungry."

I feel my own brows climb as an incredulous laugh spills from the depths of me. "Do you want to go back to the cabin, or to town?"

She tips her head back at the darkening sky. Then she shakes it. "I think Simba is missing us."

He's not. The lazy dog is sleeping, but because I no longer have any desire to take her into town tonight, I say, "Get on. I'll get one of the guys to grab pizza."

It nearly killed me to give her privacy as she sat in the bath with her thoughts—thoughts she hadn't been willing to share with me even though I'd asked. I'd nearly demanded she let me sit with her while she bathed, but when she looked at me with those big eyes, her whispered plea for privacy had nearly gutted me.

I won't claim to be a good man, but my hands had been tied in that moment. With a single nod, my heart slamming like a beast in a cage against my ribs, I'd left her to her bath.

I heard Dimitri enter with the pizza and leave again without ever getting up from the chair outside the bathroom.

Then, at the sound of water finally draining, I stood and moved to the door. With a tap, I enter to find my wife standing with a towel wrapped around her body, staring at herself in a fog-rimmed mirror.

Her red hair is twisted into a knotted clip at the back of her head, her skin is flushed, and her eyes are wide. She tracks me in the mirror as I move, but makes no effort to escape me.

I tug the clip from her hair as I reach for her brush, watching as her eyes drift closed when the bristles connect with her scalp. Then I see it, the quiver of her lips. It's faint, repressed. She's trying to hide it.

My voice falls deep into the space between us. "How do you feel?"

She doesn't answer for a moment. She's trying to gather herself. To assemble the fragile, tender pieces, she doesn't wish me to see.

I see everything, though. All the beautiful, wonderful, sweet fragments of her.

She steals a breath, but it's shallow. "Fine. Why?"

Ah, so this is how she wants to play it. I nearly smile, but catch myself. "Considering I fucked you for the first time on the seat of a sled, I figured you might have a different answer."

Her eyes flash to mine, the pink in her cheeks deepening. Under the towel, I watch as her nipples pebble.

My dick grows hard. Again.

I keep running the brush through her hair until it feels like a fall of silk.

She accuses softly, "You're crass."

"Was what we did not crass?"

She sniffs. "I highly doubt it's the most unconventional of ways you've done it."

She's right about that. I've been fucking away my frustrations since I was a young teen. Before that, I'd had stellar relations with my hand.

But with her, it hadn't been about the fuck. At least not entirely. It had been about losing myself in soft warmth. I'd felt, fucking bizarrely, that I'd come home.

Still, her comment nags. Snaking my hand around her neck, I let the pad of my thumb slide over the flutter of her pulse. Puffy lips I want to kiss, and bite, and lick, part on a shallow inhale as her eyes pin mine in the glass.

"You and I don't go there, Ruby. Not ever."

"Where?"

"To the women in my past. They will stay in my past, where they are meant to be. I haven't wanted another woman—haven't let myself be with another woman—since you came into my life." Peering through my lashes at her, I lower my head to kiss the smooth, warm skin of her shoulder. She shivers under my touch. "They have no place between us. Not now. Not ever. Do you understand?"

I don't expect the acquiescent, "Yes," that she breathes.

I grin, and she shudders when I rumble, "Good girl."